


25 Things to do Before Age 25

by geekygingergirl



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 01:30:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4244403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekygingergirl/pseuds/geekygingergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara discovers a sort of bucket list of things to do before age 25.  She and the Doctor follow it through to the end.<br/>Series of short scenes with lots of fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	25 Things to do Before Age 25

“Doctor,” Clara said, walking across the TARDIS with phone in hand, “I just found this list.”  
“A list! Magnificent! I could take you to the library of lists, if you’d like.”  
“No, like a bucket list. 25 things to do before you turn 25.”  
“You already are 25,” he said, pausing to look at her. “You’re already dead, too, here, and not born yet where we went yesterday.”  
“Yeah, but, I dunno, I haven’t done most of them. So why not?”  
A grin split his face. “That’s my girl.” Clara couldn’t help but smile too.

“Number one: go to a music festival.”  
“Ah, perfect,” The Doctor said. “There’s one on Elixoupholus I’ve been meaning to go to for ages.”  
“Alien music?”  
“Whatever music. It transmits an important song into your brain, and only yours.”  
“Important?”  
“From your past, your consciousness.”

Clara swayed to NSYNC as the Doctor looked on, amused.  
“What?” she asked.  
“I hijacked the system. I can see hear what you’re playing.”  
Clara blushed but continued to dance defiantly. “I can’t control what it picks. This was a very important song of my childhood.”  
The Doctor snorted, but swayed a little too.

“Number two. See a lunar eclipse.”   
“We can do better than that.”

Clara gripped the Doctor’s hand as the three moons slipped over each other and the blaze of a foreign sun bathed them in a fiery light.  
“Thank you.”

“Number three. Attend a major sporting event.” Clara made a face.  
“I did tell you about my stint in the anti-grav Olympics, didn’t I?”

Clara screamed. Really loudly. This was not fun. But it was pretty cool. And very high. And upside down. And not fun.

“Number four. Go to Vegas.”  
“We did that already.”  
“No, you promised we would. And then we ended up sopping wet in a Cold War submarine.”

Clara held out the dice for the Doctor to blow on, doubling over in hysterical laughter. She might have already gotten a start on number five: get really drunk.

“Number six,” Clara groaned. She held the phone up to her sunglasses-covered eyes. “Learn to cook something fancy.”  
“How would you like to meet Julia Child?”

Clara closed her eyes and took a bite. Her eyes filled with tears. “Doctor, this is disgusting.”  
“Yours is….really good,” he lied, coughing up into a wastebin.

“Seven. Go to a Pride parade or party.”  
“Ooh, like the one with all the lions and tigers in Calypso 7?”  
“No, like gay pride.”  
The Doctor thought for a moment. “Let me call Jack.”

Clara was slumped alone in the corner, casting occasional glances over her shoulder at the Doctor, who was being kissed (very enthusiastically) by a young man with a rainbow t-shirt and two extra arms. It was that sort of planet.  
“You must be Clara Oswald,” said a man approaching her. He had piercing blue eyes, broad shoulders, strong cheekbones, and a half-smirk.  
“Uhhhh, yeah,” she said after remembering how to talk.  
“Captain Jack Harkness. The Doctor said you could use some help with a certain number eight.”   
Clara accepted his proffered hand and let him pull her to her feet. She looked down at the next item on the list: have a one-night stand. This list was going down rather smoothly.

“Nine,” Clara yawned. “Change your appearance dramatically.”  
“There’s a really great hair salon on 42nd,” the Doctor suggested.  
“What, 42nd planet?”  
“No. 42nd street.”

Clara yelped and squeezed the Doctor’s hand as the scissors approached her hair. She winced and closed her eyes as she heard the tell-tale snip.   
She walked away with a bob, and was never quite sure what city the salon-on-42nd-street was in. It also seemed to have disappeared by the time she glanced back.  
All her hair grew back the next day.

“Ten. Take care of someone who’s drunk.” Clara frowned. “Why couldn’t that one be after the get-drunk-myself one?” She looked up expectantly. “Doctor?”  
“That is my name. Well, sort-of. Yes?”  
“I need you to get drunk.”  
“Well,” he laughed, “it’ll take a little more than your human drink to floor me.”

It didn’t. Clara pulled back his little flop of hair as he retched into the bushes. Check.

“Eleven. Whale-watching.”  
“Ooh, brilliant! They could have done better with such a lovely number, though. We could- we could do star whales,” the Doctor replied, a strange pensive look coming over his face.   
Clara looked at him, knowing that it was usually best to wait quietly for these moods to pass.

The sea air splashed over them, and the Doctor put an arm around Clara, pulling her close as their eyes caught the magnificent beasts jumping on the horizon. She nestled in closer to him, surprised at the tears welling in her eyes.

“Twelve. Solve a Rubik’s cube.”  
“I do think that can be arranged.”

The Doctor stood directly behind Clara, hands over her eyes. He pulled them away. “Ta-da!”  
A 2 meter tall cube stood in front of them, each side covered in at least 50 colorful squares.  
“No,” Clara said flatly, turning straight back into the TARDIS.  
“Oh,” The Doctor said, smile fading a bit. He approached the cube and whispered, “I’ll be back, beautiful,” before following Clara.

“Thirteen. Have your portrait painted.”  
“I could break out the old box of paints.”  
“Really?”  
“If you want.”

“Do I get to see it?”  
The Doctor yanked the sheet over the portrait, cheeks going red. “Not now.”  
Clara pouted. 

“Fourteen. Wrap a snake around your neck.” She looked up with huge eyes. “Please no,” she added in a desperate whisper.  
“We’re in this now, sister,” the Doctor said, patting her on the head. “Never calling you that again.”

Clara whimpered as the thick snake stretched across her neck. “Done? We’re done now?”  
The Doctor nodded at the snake trainer, who lifted it off her. The Doctor stepped forward to wrap Clara in his arms. They stayed like that for a long time before Clara pulled back. “Now it’s your turn.”  
“What? No! That’s not how this works.”  
“Yes it is.”  
Now it was the Doctor’s turn to whimper.

“Fifteen. Audition for something.”  
“I have a friend. Well, friend of a friend. Might be worth a try.”

“Why does this audition require me being dressed as an Elizabethan man?” Clara grumbled, pulling at her tights and ruff. The TARDIS doors swung open. “Oh.”  
She didn’t get the part. She just sort of stood and stared at the playwright. And cried a bit. The Doctor might have forgotten she was an English teacher.

“Sixteen. Um.” Clara coughed.  
“What?”   
“Sixteen. Go skinny dipping with someone.”  
“Ah. Okay. Want a nude colony, or-“  
“I think just plain…skinny dipping will be just fine. Us.”  
“Right.”

There was a faint splash from behind her. “I’m in,” the Doctor said, words hanging gently in the cool breeze.  
“Looking away?”  
“Yes,” he said, and it was probably her imagination, but Clara thought there was a hesitance, a sigh, in his voice. She yanked off her shirt and shimmied out of her trousers, unclasped her bra and slid down her pants. Then she turned, took two steps, and leapt into the silent waters.

“Seventeen. See a murmuration. What’s that?”  
“Creative, these list writers!” the Doctor enthused. “It’s like a great flock of birds, all moving in unison. Supposed to be hugely impressive.”  
“Any idea where to find one?”  
“Well,” he thought for a while, “no. But I have faith in the TARDIS.”

Clara was out of breath with all the running. “What does- b-being chased by…rhinos in spacesuits….have to do with- murmurations?” she panted.  
“Oh. That,” the Doctor said, equally breathless. She raised her head. Great birds wheeled above them in a careful, spontaneous choreography.  
“That indeed.”

“Eighteen. Ahhhh.”  
“Not skinny dipping again?”  
“Try an illegal substance.”

“You’re green,” Clara giggled, reaching out and bopping the Doctor on the nose.  
“You’ve got flowers and elephants in your hair,” he said dreamily, running his fingers through it.  
“What is this stuff?”

“Nineteen. Get lost and find your way back without any map or phone.”  
“What better way to get lost than a maze?”

“You’re still a bit green,” Clara mused, pulling him by the hand through the mile-high grasses.  
“You’ve still got flowers in your hair,” he teased, slipping a tiny blue flower from the ground behind her ear. She smiled, letting his hand rest there a while.

“Twenty. Write a message in a bottle.”  
“We’re getting more sentimental as we go,” the Doctor said, but there was a friendly affection in his voice. He, like Clara, felt the end of the list eminent.

They stood facing the Great Sea of Alphyxior, hands clasped and secrets floating into the distant blue nothingness.

“Twenty-one.” Clara laughed out loud as she read it. “Attend a murder mystery dinner.”  
“Brilliant! It has to be a historical one though.”  
“And not a real murder.”

“Well, you got your wish,” Clara hissed. They were huddled in the corner of a crypt, the footsteps of the murderous prince growing ever closer.

“Twenty-two. Watch six movies back to back. We’re doing Harry Potter. All eight.”  
“No complaints here.”

Clara fell asleep before the second film was over. But her head was on his shoulder, and he could watch her lips moving ever so slightly with her breathing, so he didn’t mind waiting.

“Twenty-three. Climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

They stood, hand in hand, watching the sun cast its rosy morning glow over the city spread out in front of them. “I love this. I …” Clara breathed in his ear.  
“I know,” he said. She didn’t have to finish the sentence.

“Twenty-four. I thought we were going to escape without this one. Bungee jumping.”  
“You’re right, it is the cheesiest bucket list item of all time. But we have to do it. You got your ‘pass’ with the Rubik’s cube.”  
“Don’t remind me,” Clara shuddered.

She could scream really loudly, the Doctor realized. But then again, so could he.

“Twenty-five.” Clara was silent, and the Doctor looked over at her across the TARDIS console. He watched a slow smile play across her lips before she looked up. “Take me to London. No, not London. Just outside. A quiet street somewhere. The day we left.”

The TARDIS faded into view at the end of a lane somewhere that would always remain nameless to them. It was raining, the kind of downpour Clara loved. She grabbed his hand and pulled him outside into the pouring rain.  
“What are we doing?” he asked, lips chattering, but smiling.  
She stepped closer to him, the rain soaking into her clothes and hair and slicking down her cheeks. She leaned up and pressed her lips against his, letting herself melt into him. The water fell down around them, but it didn’t matter, because they were clinging to each other and they were beautiful, and he was laughing a bit into her kiss, and she was smiling back into his.  
“Number twenty-five,” she said in a nearly reverent voice, stroking back his hair. “Kiss in the rain.”


End file.
